Barriers to Teaching Social Determinants of Health: Nursing Study-Abroad Programs in a Digital Age

The social determinants of health are the conditions in which humans are born, grow up, live, work, and age (World Health Organization [WHO], 2012). In nursing programs, this content is typically taught in community health courses. Another strategy for teaching students how to understand the social determinants of health is study-abroad courses. Budding nurses can learn how to assess conditions that influence the health of a community. Conducting this assessment in a culture that differs from the student's own can help highlight what factors impact one's own health. For the past eight years, the author has been teaching the social and cultural determinants of health to nursing students by taking them on 3-week cultural immersion/community health study-abroad programs. Destinations have included Ghana, Austria, the Netherlands, and Thailand. This article presents observations on how the teaching of social determinants of health has changed during the period 2008–2016.